


ripples reach far from a single pebble (she is far from a pebble)

by Shadow_Bringer



Series: They Change Nothing At All (And Everything All At Once) [1]
Category: Naruto, 僕のヒーローアカデミア | Boku no Hero Academia | My Hero Academia
Genre: Child Abuse, Dabi is Todoroki Touya, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Implied/Referenced Domestic Violence, I’d say nothing worse than canon but that doesn’t mean much when one fandom is Naruto, Kushina is a good aunt, Other, Reincarnation, Stockholm Syndrome, Todoroki Enji | Endeavor's Bad Parenting, and the other has Todoroki Enji in it
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-07
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:56:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 7
Words: 5,139
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25039615
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shadow_Bringer/pseuds/Shadow_Bringer
Summary: Shouto loves his siblings and his mother. Loves them with all he has though they don’t help, theyneverhelp. He father is less a father now than a stranger but his disappointment in Shoutoburnslike the fire that he used to think was so pretty.(It’s not pretty anymore, it’s scary and ithurts)Auntie’s different, though. Different then all of them. He decides he loves her most of all.
Relationships: Uzumaki Kushina & Todoroki Shouto
Series: They Change Nothing At All (And Everything All At Once) [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1888354
Comments: 6
Kudos: 166
Collections: Reincarnation and Transmigration





	1. Shouto

Shouto had been so happy when his quirk came. It meant he could be a hero, like his dad, like _All Might_. Even better, it was ice _and_ fire. Both of his parents quirks! The day the fire sparked and flickered around one hand, ice creeping it’s way up his opposite arm, he thought was the happiest day of his life. His mom started crying, though. Fuyu-née and Natsuo-nii were just quiet (always quiet unless Dad is gone and Shouto doesn’t understand why). His dad is smiling but it’s with too many teeth, too wide. It’s not a nice smile, not like the ones Mom gives him or the ones his sister and brother give. It’s a bad smile and it makes him shrink into himself, letting the ice melt and the fire sputter out. He doesn’t want to see that smile.

The next day, Fuyu-née wakes him up. She looks scared and sad. There are tears on her cheeks and even half asleep, Shouto does his best to make them go away. She doesn’t smile or stop crying. She just says sorry, over and over, as she makes him get up and get dressed.

”D-dad- Endeavor,” and his sister cuts herself off, scrubbing at her eyes. Shouto stumbles after her, through hallways he’s known all his (short, so very short) life. The training room is the room everyone in the house knows and avoids. It’s where Dad stops being _Dad_ (was he ever ‘Dad’? Did he ever care?) and starts being _Endeavor_. Shouto doesn’t want to go to the training room but Fuyu-née tugs him along and she’s still crying, still saying sorry, but now she’s getting quieter. Quieter like how she gets around Dad, not a happy quiet.

Shouto is scared, really scared, for the first time in his life and it’s the fault of his Dad and his sister.

The day he got his quirk should have been the happiest day of his life but when he faces his own Dad, fire raging and smiling a too-wide smile with too many teeth, he quickly learned that it was the worst. His fire (fire he got from his Dad- from _Endeavor_ ) flickers and rages and _burns._ Shouto learns to be quiet, like his siblings, learns to fear the fire.

More than the fire, his nightmares star Endeavor, who was supposed to be a hero ( _his_ hero, _his dad)._

  
“Hello Shouto,” the woman with red, red hair says too loudly, grinning so widely all he can think about is Endeavor’s smile, with too many teeth. She’s loud even though Endeavor’s around but Fuyu-née and Natsuo-nii and mom seem _happy_ that the woman is here, happy like they haven’t been in so long, and Shouto decides he likes the woman, even if she’s too loud.

”I’m Kushina, your aunt. Call me Kushina-née,” she introduces, hands on her hips. Shouto can only offer a small smile, hand tightening on his mom’s. She squeezes back, comforting, and Shouto doesn’t hide behind her leg when Endeavor glances down at him.

”How long are you staying, Kushina-chan?” Fuyu-née asks, so quiet. Shouto almost can’t hear her, not in the absence of Kushina-née’s loudness. The woman hums, cocking one hip in way that seems only vaguely familiar (Fuyu-née used to do that, back before when Endeavor was still Dad, and she wasn’t always so sad).

”Just for a few days. Minato and Naruto’ll pick me up when they come through,” she says and Shouto doesn’t know who Minato or Naruto are but if they make his family happy like Kushina-née does, he thinks he’ll like them.

Kushina-née, he finds, is nice. She’s bright and loud but mostly she’s nice. Not nice in the way his family is- she is overwhelming in her kindness and _gives_ more than she _takes_. She offers and laughs delightedly when he accepts but never makes it his fault when he doesn’t. They eat around steady conversation, now, instead of the awkward quiet Shouto’s grown used to. Even Endeavor seems nicer. Shouto doesn’t believe him, though. He’s not a nice man and Shouto doesn’t want to get hurt again.

It’s almost too good to be true. Mom and Fuyu-née and Natsuo-nii are smiling and they’re happy, even if they’re still quiet. But Kushina-née is loud enough to make them sound not-so-quiet. Shouto has a bad feeling about it all, even if he’s happy. Endeavor doesn’t like stopping training and Shouto is _scared_.

Scared Kushina-née will still be here when Endeavor starts training again.

Scared she won’t _care_.

Scared she’ll let it happen and offer sad, sad apologies.

And Endeavor does start training again. The fourth day of Kushina-née’s visit, Fuyu-née wakes him up. She’s scared. She’s scared and sorry and crying and Shouto _knows_. His break has come to an end and that means training and training means Endeavor.

Training’s harder than normal. Maybe it’s because Kushin-née’s here now, in one of the guest rooms. Maybe it’s because he could almost see _Dad_ for those few, short days, underneath Endeavor. Maybe it’s just because the training is harder. Shouto tries to keep up. He _does_ but it’s too much and he’s too weak and he just wants to go back to yesterday and the day before. He wants those days forever- not this. Not training and the too-loud quiet and the tears.

There’s a rush of golden-yellow fire. It’s taller than he is and too wide for him to dodge. He needs to make an ice wall, needs to- to- do _something_ \- There’s a flicker of red and Shouto can’t tell if it’s fire or blood or ( _red, red hair_ ). The fire goes around him. It shouldn’t but it apparently doesn’t care about what it should or shouldn’t do because it does.

Kushinia-née’s in front of him. Her hands are spread and she’s angry. But she’s not angry at Shouto- she’s angry at Endeavor and that’s new. It’s new and scary but Shouto doesn’t care. He’s tired and Kushina-née’s here, protecting him, so he sleeps.

(Later, he’ll remember the burns on his aunt’s hands. Later, he’ll remember the golden chains and blood-red not-fire. Later, he’ll remember a lot of things.

Most of all, he’ll remember how safe Kushina had felt and how nice she was. How angry she was when she found Endeavor training him.

And he’ll remember all of this and he’ll realize that Kushina, not Fuyu-née or his mom, _Kushina_ is who he loves the most.)


	2. Natsuo

Natsuo adores Kushina-néechan. Oh, he loves his mom and his siblings but Kushina-néechan is easy to be with and to love with everything in him. It’s at odds with how hard to handle her personality is, boisterous and bright and dangerous in a way Endeavor could never hope to match. Kushina-néechan will judge you on a lot of things- how well you fight, how well you can cook, your looks -but it’s all light-hearted and gentle teasing. She draws out laughter and sarcastic retorts and thrives in it but she never, _never_ , holds your family or differences or quirk against you. She loves and she hates for your personality and she’s loud and teasing and taunting when she likes you and so cold and burning all at once when she doesn’t.

Natsuo knows all of this but he doesn’t understand. Doesn’t understand how she works or thinks or lives. Doesn’t understand how Endeavor and Kushina-néechan could be siblings. He can see she loves him, so fiercely like she can’t believe she has a brother, and he thinks about Touya and he doesn’t understand.

What he does understand is that it isn’t Fuyumi or him that step between Shouto (Shouto, who was a sweet, sweet child and now is just small and quiet and scared like they are) and Endeavor. It’s Kushina-néechan, blazing with blood red flames so similar to her hair and glittering with golden chains, with a rage so palpable that Natsuo is choking on it even as he watches it in awe. Fuyumi, her hand in his, is so, so quiet next to him and he knows she’s crying because she loves this family, loves _all_ of it because she’s too good, and she’s breaking under the strain of it. He doesn’t really understand Fuyumi, either.

And Endeavor- _oh_ , Natsuo thrives on Endeavor’s surprise and fear. He tucks the image of Endeavor’s desperate horror at his flames (revels in the idea that the fire that plagued his own nightmares might finally make an appearance in Endeavor’s), his fear of Kushina-néechan’s violent, wrathful beauty away to savour.

He doesn’t like hospitals. They smell bad and their endless white halls seem to stretch forever. The despair of the patients makes him angry.

_(In the back of his mind, he remembers blue flames and the smell of burning flesh so strong in the air he can nearly taste it-)_

Kushina-néechan is still angry and the chair she’s sitting in is melting, painfully slow. The smell of burning plastic hasn’t reached him yet, but he knows it will soon. Between them, Shouto is on a hospital bed.

_(-and there are blue, blue eyes and a feeble smile despite the burns-)_

He’s not hurt, not really. There’s some strain to his muscles and tendons and quirk and the doctor puts it down as a young boy not knowing his own limits because Endeavor doesn’t pay him to look any deeper. Kushina-néechan’s lips pull back into a feral snarl and her hands clench in her lap. She’s wild and tied down and it’s such an oxymoron that he wants to laugh, bitter and humorless.

_(-there were words too quiet for him to hear, and there was no angry, comforting woman beside them-)_

Kushina-néechan can’t do anything, he knows. Endeavor will never allow it, sister or not. The hero, though he dirties that term, has too much wealth and power and clout in the world of politics for her to ever rescue them from his clutches. Oh, but will she try. He knows she will because, if things had been different, he knows he would have ended up just like her. Instead, he’s quiet and scared and will never be able to work up the courage to step between his little brother and the man that dares call himself their father.

 _(-he doesn’t see those soft eyes and softer smiles again, will_ never see them again-)

Shouto’s alive, though, but he’ll never have Natsuo and Fuyumi’s freedom. Their anonymity in their own house. Not home, never home, but they live there so it is, unfortunately, their house. Shouto’s alive and Natsuo will do anything he can force himself to do to make his life even a little better, the way he know Fuyumi and his mom and Kushina-néechan will. It’ll never be ideal, he knows, but hopefully it’ll be enough.

 _(-hopefully he won’t loose another brother to Endeavor, to the #2_ Hero _.)_


	3. Fuyumi

Fuyumi never adored Kushina. Not in the way The rest of her family clearly does. She respects Kushina, maybe even loves her, but she never sees that older woman. Never spends any time with her or bonded with her. She loves Kushina’s visits if only because the tension of the house seems to dissipate when she’s around. He brothers and mom _smile_ and laugh and cajole and joke and have _fun_ and they don’t _do that_ when Kushina isn’t there to run interference between her dad and the rest of her family.

...She doesn’t want interference.

She wants her dad to give up his dream of beating All Might via his children. Her dad loves them- even if the others can’t see that like she can. He loves them and he struggle to show that and he’s made all the wrong choices but Fuyumi can’t just persecute him.

She loves him because he’s her dad and because she remembers when he made time to treat them like an actual family and she _knows_ that a few moments where he treats them right don’t make up for all the abuse but she just-

She _can’t_ hate him. Not even when they end up in the hospital for a second time, this time for Shouto. Oh, she’s angry at him. Furious in a way she had only been the first time this had happened. She doesn’t hate him, though.

Past that matching rage in her eyes, she can tell Kushina doesn’t hate him either. Natsuo does. Shouto’s starting to. Her mom- her mom _regrets_. Fuyumi isn’t sure if Todoroki Rei has hit the cusp yet but she’s there, ready to join her youngest sons in their pointless hatred.

Fuyumi doesn’t understand how they can hate their own family but she’s sure they don’t understand how she still loves her dad, either. So she does her best.

She makes breakfast with her mom for Natsuo and Shouto and then makes more for her dad under her mom’s concerned eyes. She takes the breakfast up to her dad’s room and leaves it on his desk if he’s busy. Then she goes back down and has breakfast with the rest of her family. She cleans and picks up around the house to help out her mom. She keeps her younger brothers busy when the shouting starts. She runs messages between her parents, paraphrasing their words enough that neither will get angry.

She teaches Natsuo what Touya had taught her about first aid. She takes care of Shouto after strenuous training sessions. She keeps her father quiet company when he’s angry but isn’t in the mood to train. She makes assurances to her mom when the woman breaks down into tears over the state of her childrens’ lives.

She pretends not to notice how Natsuo keeps Kushina informed on the going ons of the house and bites her lip when she wants yell at her family that they need to get their shit together.

(She shares more in common with her dad and her aunt then her siblings do. There’s a core part of her that she shares with the two warriors that Shouto and Natsuo don’t. They don’t have the innate viciousness, the stubbornness to do _whatever it takes_ to get what they want.

If she wasn’t set on being a healer, she would have made a tremendous fighter.)

(She stands by every member of her family, even when they all do horrible things. She may be furious when her dad runs them into the ground with his demands or when Natsuo snarls death threats when he thinks no one else is listening but she still loves them.

And if she loves them, how could she ever hate her mom for burning Shouto with boiling water, even when she wants she screams and yell that Rei was never meant hurt them?


	4. Touya

When Touya was young, back before he got his quirk, he thought his family was the best family ever. He had a mom that loved him and his dad was the Number Two Hero and they got him almost anything he asked for. He got sick easily but he didn’t care about that. All he cared about was spending time with his family. His dad and mom and sister loved him and he loved them. They were happy.

Then Touya’s quirk started killing him and something _shifted_. His dad turned desperate and angry and cold. Colder even than Fuyumi’s snow and mom’s ice.

That’s when he met Kushina. At first, Kushina managed to bring his dad back to him. Everyone was happy again. They were almost back to where they started.

Everything fell apart again when Natsuo got his quirk.

His dad- Endeavor was angry. Furious. Not at them, not yet, but it all still affected the family.

It started off slow. Training now and then for the three of them. Touya the most. Natsuo the least (he would learn later that it’s because Natsuo’s quirk was the weakest and Touya’s the strongest, even if it burned him up from the inside. It doesn’t make anything better, to know that).

By the fifth month, they were training once a week without fail, sometimes twice. By the seventh month, the training was harsher. By the eighth, they were training everyday.

By the end of the year, it wasn’t training any more. It was abuse and it no long stayed in the confines of the training room. He controlled the house with an iron fist and he wasn’t afraid to use his ~~_fireitburnsimafraidimafraidimafrAID_~~ strength to get what he wanted. 

In the end, he’s seven when Shouto is born. In the end, he’s eight when he nearly dies. In the end, he’s just turned nine when he disappears from the Todoroki family, proclaimed dead from a dangerous quirk malfunction.

(It wasn’t a malfunction he wanted to ~~_kill_~~ hurt Endeavor.)

The second time he meets Kushina, it’s when he wakes up in her arms, in the backseat of a moving car with a little blonde baby curled up next to him, blinking up with too-blue eyes.

”This is Naruto,” Kushina had said. “He’s your cousin.”

And oh, it was such a wonderful thing, to have family that ~~_his father_~~ Endeavor couldn’t control.

(He remembers Shouto and Natsuo and Fuyumi, of course, and he feels wretched that he left them but Kushina soothes him with quiet murmurs and a sweet promises of not-quite revenge.)

He throws himself into this small family where fire is golden instead of red and ~~_hisuncledad_~~ Minato can teleport with lightning and wind and he only has one younger sibling by the name of Naruto.   
  


Everyone in this new family is so different, so full of life. Minato forgets the time when he’s with Kushina and Kushina never steps over his boundaries even though her energy takes her on a whirlwind’s path through the house and Naruto is a sweet but demanding child who craves attention with everything in him.

(Kushina and Minato get this look when he flinches away from contact or locks himself away when it’s all too much or dyes his red hair black. It’s not pity and it’s not bad. It’s strange and faraway and so, so sad. It’s not sympathy, not quite, but it’s understanding. It makes him think that maybe, just maybe, they’ve been through something similar.

He can’t think of anything sadder than that.)

They don’t stop him from changing his looks or decorating his burns with tiny bits of metal or changing his name. They help him, guide him, but they don’t stop him.

So when they find him in the streets, fighting because that’s all he knows how to do, they don’t condemn him. They teach him. And maybe it should’ve been less surprising than it was, maybe he should've have seen this happening, but he still flinches away from a blow that never comes.

They train him. They train him but they don’t abuse him and he’s learned to differentiate between the content burn of well worked muscles and the dark _painithurtiwanttodie_ of abuse.

Kushina show him how to use his quirk without hurting himself, how to make his weak constitution into a strength. Minato shows him how to use his quirk with control so fine that it dwarfs anything Endeavor has ever done, even with so much less flame behind it.

They teach him other things, as well. Like how it’s okay to hate Endeavor for what he’s done. How he doesn’t have to forgive his abuser to move on with his life. How forgetting and _living_ in spite of everything is so much more fulfilling than revenge could ever be. How wanting revenge doesn’t make him a bad person, just a human one. They teach him that it’s okay that he doesn’t trust heroes anymore, that he doesn’t want to be one. They teach him that he’s ~~_okay_ _fine_ _great_~~ amazing as is and that he doesn’t need to have ~~_Endeavor’s his father’s_~~ anyone’s approval to be a great man and a good person.

They accept him and love him and it’s heady in it’s addictiveness and he can never, ever thank them enough for what they’ve done no matter what they say to him.

Dabi still thinks his family is the best family ever. Only now his family is Kushina and Minato and Naruto and that team of young heroes-who-might-be-vigilantes and those older guys that stop by to argue with each other and Naruto’s two little friends and their parents. His family is made of liars and scoundrels and thieves that double as heroes and friends and good people and he wouldn’t have them any other way.


	5. Rei

Rei didn’t want to marry Enji. It wasn’t a choice she had. It was arranged by their parents because Rei’s ice and Enji’s fire are so, so strong.

(She thinks she would have preferred Kushina, with her loud nature and boisterousness and stubbornness to do what she believes is right but two women can’t have a child and Rei’s been promised to Enji and Kushina’s been promised to some other guy.)

Rei marries Enji anyway, because her parents want her to and she wants to make her parents happy even if that means marrying a man she doesn’t love. So in the end, she has no choice in her marriage.

(Except she does- Kushina took her arranged marriage by the horns and defeated it and Rei’s just too _scarediwanttomakemomanddadproudIdontwantthis_ to fight)

They don’t learn to love each other but they learn to care for each other. They learn each other’s sense of humor and favorite foods, they have dinner with each other’s family. They have a son, and through the thick fear in her chest she names him Touya.

Nothing changes and life goes on. They take care of Touya, who gets sick too easily. They have fun. They don’t-quite-love each other (but it’s so, so close).

And they have a daughter, only a year later. The fear is there, again, but it’s not as strong. She names the baby girl Fuyumi, after Rei’s grandmother, who the girl looks just like even at this age.

They’re _happy._ They’re happy and then they’re worried because Touya’s quirk _burns him_ and they don’t know what to do. Enji pulls away in his desperate search for a cure. Rei watches as he yells into a phone, angry and sad and worried and scared all at once. She looks at Fuyumi, who’s sweet snow quirk was overlooked in the chaos, at Natsuo who’s so, so young but who is still so affected.

She calls Kushina.

The woman arrives in the whirlwind of energy she’s always been, with news of a husband and with soothing words that pull Enji back to them.

(Rei ignores the burn of jealousy at Kushina’s husband. She ~~_loves_~~ likes Enji well enough and that’s all she could have asked for, in this situation)

They’re happy again. Nothing’s changed (everything’s changed).

(Abuse starts when Natsuo shoves off his weak ice quirk and his sensitivity to the heat and chill. It continues until Touya ~~_dies_~~ joins Kushina’s family. It continues until Rei can’t bare to love Enji anymore. It continues until Rei sees blue and red and thinks Enji when it’s only Shouto. It continues after Rei is in a mental institute, crying over her mistakes and wishing so, so much that she had fought back against her parents all those years ago.)

(Except she had loved Enji and she lives her children and all she really regrets is how being famous changed her husband into someone unrecognizable.)


	6. Enji

Enji loves his family. He loves his parents and he loves his wife and he loves his children but most of all he loves Kushina.

(He loves other things too- the awe and respect he garners, the fear in villains’ eyes, the power of it all.)

He loves Kushina because she is his twin sister and because she has been there since day one. When they were kids, she never left his side. They are together, played together, and slept in the same room.

(Sometimes they slept in the same bed, Kushina curled around him like she can’t believe he exists, like she’s afraid he’s going to lose him. This is always after one of her nightmares, where her eyes are empty and cold and she flinches away from every little touch.)

He wanted to get stronger because of her. He wanted to get stronger to protect her and keep her safe and make her happy.

(He can’t do that. He can’t protect her when he’s not the strongest. He needs to be stronger, the strongest and if he can’t be the best... his children have to.)

Then he met Rei and his goals didn’t change but they shifted because Rei was beautiful and kind and he loved her even if she didn’t love him.

(She wouldn’t listen to him, wouldn’t ever listen to him, and he’s so, so angry and he just wanted her to ~~_obey_~~ listen to him.)

Touya and Fuyumi are his prides and joy and he wants them to succeed in life. To be great and good.

(They’re not strong enough, not good enough, not enough, none of them are, they’re all weak. Why are they all so useless?)

He loves his sister and his family.

(His sister is terrifying with her bloody fire and golden chain and cold, dead eyes and his family is weak and useless and undeserving of his greatness.)

He only wants the best for them.

(His sister _stole his son_. She needs to _burn_ for her impudence.)


	7. Kushina

Kushina wakes up gradually. Consciousness returns to her in bits and spurts.

She sleeps with blood in her teeth and fury in her eyes and a curse on her lips. She wakes to bright blue eyes and hair as red as her own and small hands twined in her own.

Kushina clings to that boy with his red hair and blue eyes and the what if’s that will never come to pass. She remembers her mother, her first one, and her people. She remember the waves and sea and whirlpools and endless sky. She remembers the forest and the leaves and the promises spoke with the conviction of a child. She remembers soft words from a red haired woman and a creature of wrath and hatred. She remembers _I love you_ and _I didn’t want to lose you_ and _your hair is beautiful_.

She has to protect Enji, protect that sweet little boy who thinks he has to protect her, because if she doesn’t no one will. He is precious and he is new and she can’t lose him, too. Not when she turns for her _blackhairredeyessosweet_ or her _blondeblueeyesiloveyou_ and finds them ~~_gone_~~ missing.

When she’s four, she burns with blood red fire and gold chains tumble around her and she cries because she’s lost so much (what has she lost what is she missing _what is it_ ) but she still has this and she has Enji, who stands so proud with his fire flickering around him.

(For a moment, Enji’s red hair is black and his blue eyes are black and he’s a she and she is so, so familiar then Enji is back and Kushina doesn’t know if she’s crying for her brother or that black-haired _womangirlshinobikunoichi_ )

When she’s seven, she wakes from a nightmare of fire and rage and anger and hatred and betrayal and the name _Makoto_ a silent gasp on her lips. And it’s not _blondeblueeyesiloveyou_ or _redhairredeyesoldlonelysweet_ or _smallblondehersprotecthim_ that she remembers first but it’s _blackhairredeyessosweet,_ it’s Uchiha Makoto, it’s her teammate, her best friend.

She cries because she remembers Makoto and she lost Makoto and she think maybe it would be better if she didn’t remember but she can’t forget because then she’d lose her (all of them) again.

She remembers quickly, so quickly (too quickly, it hurts, make it stop), after that. She remembers Minato and Jiraiya and Tsunade and Orochimaru and Sarutobi-sama and her hopes and dreams and she remembers Naruto, just born but already her in every way (already an orphan, she abandoned him, she need to go back).

She remembers all the good and all the bad and she mourns because all of it had been hers but now it’s gone and she can’t get it back.

(She still has blood-red fire and golden chains and Enji, Enji who she loves so much and so desperately that she thinks that if she lost him she would lose herself)

She looks at this world and thinks _my home was scarier than you_. She looks at these villains and thinks _my friends were scarier than you_. She looks at Enji and thinks my family was so much stronger than you.

She thinks all of this and she knows that it’s not a good thing. It’s not a good thing she had been trained since she could walk to fight _(killseducebetraymanipulate) ( ~~protect~~ )._

_She lets go._

She remembers in every step and heartbeat and breath but she lets go. Uzushio isn’t hers. Konoha isn’t hers. Makoto, Minato, Naruto, the sannin... they aren’t hers.

(Always hers, only hers, but only in memories and wishes and dreams that are always just out of reach)

She learns your love again (she never forgot) because now Enji is hers. Rei is hers. Her parents, new but always there, are hers. She laughs and she cries and she mourns but she does it with them.

She sees brown hair and brown eyes and thinks of a child soldier with a senbon held delicately in his mouth. She sees her betrothed and thinks _I can’t love you_. So she doesn’t. She refuses.

(She refuses and finds blonde hair and blue eyes she refuses and finds black on black she refuses and find _home_ )

She finds angry blue eyes framed by red hair and surrounded by the smell of burning flesh and thinks of a man with a scalpel and a syringe and anger in his heart and a child taken apart and put back together in the name of science and power.

She rages. She cries and screams and hates because this wasn’t supposed to be like before, when people killed and abused and hurt innocent children in the name of power.

She finds her purpose again, steadies her feet, and turns to her brother with anger and rage and hatred (she doesn’t hate him, could never hate him but she tries. She tries for a small boy who flinches at too fast movements and at her red hair and at Minato’s blue eyes and who has nightmares and who only knows how to fight and who feels like he has to hide who he is).

She takes her stand. She stands with friends and family and former enemies and she looks at this world and says _be better._

 _Be so much better because you_ can _._


End file.
